Interview with Joseph Hewitt

Joseph Hewitt is the Senior Designer of Auran's "Fury". This MMORPG wowed us at E3, impressed us when we saw it in Australia and now we learn more as Carolyn Koh asks Joseph some questions.

MMORPG.com: Why did you create a game like Fury that breaks away from the traditional class mold? (What do you think is lacking in the current line-up of MMOGs out there?)

Joseph Hewitt: The class mold is a very artificial constraint and only seems normal because it has been around for so long. The reason why it has survived for so long is that it easy for game designers to balance. They know exactly what to expect from each character class and can balance accordingly. In many ways classes are like training wheels for players, and very early on we decided we were making this game for the core audience.

Skill based systems offer so much more and let players build characters aligned with their own play style. Of course this can be harder to balance, but ultimately it is far more fun.

Once we decided to go with a skill based system for Fury, we took a hard look at what some of the downsides to it were. Personally, when I play games where I can build my own character, I am always afraid I am making a bad decision that might gimp my character. We decided that we wanted you to be able to rebuild your character anytime you wanted with no costs or penalties. That way we were sure players were free to have fun and experiment. Once we did that it was just a natural progress to say that you could load and save those templates and the incarnation system was born.

The incarnation system led to so many other benefits. For example, incarnations remove the need to have alts since you can switch between incarnations anytime. This also means you don’t have to fill your friend’s list with multiple entries for one person keeping track of his alts. One of the really cool things is you can build a lower ranked incarnations to play with friends new to the game.